D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[Neonchameleon]

That's a good address to the snowballing problem, but it doesn't really make the process any more interesting from where I sit.

The process isn't especially interesting and it would be less useful to me if it was. It's a tool I use for pacing and difficulty for the absurd plans players can come up with, to make them about the right length to be entertaining and the right degree of difficulty. I don't tell the players they are in a skill challenge and the interesting part is how they are interacting with the game world.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The process isn't especially interesting and it would be less useful to me if it was. It's a tool I use for pacing and difficulty for the absurd plans players can come up with, to make them about the right length to be entertaining and the right degree of difficulty. I don't tell the players they are in a skill challenge and the interesting part is how they are interacting with the game world.

Then we just don't have the same purposes.

 

[pemerton]

Suppose that mission is a 4e SC. How is that not EMBODYING his process of one-and-done? You make your Stealth check, its a primary skill of the challenge, so you CAN use it multiple times, but you are never forced to do so. Once you've Stealthed, that can stand in for your stealthiness during the rest of the challenge. Either you blew it and at some point (which the GM shall narrate) fictionally you got spotted, or you were sooooo sneaky and that aspect is dealt with. As the SC rules go, you COULD make further Stealth checks, but they would represent changes in fictional state, since the SC rules require the fiction to advance to a new state with each check.

<snip>

I could imagine a process where the SC rules basically state "you never repeat the same check twice." If you make a Stealth check it stands for ALL future fiction within the scope of that SC, regardless of fiction, etc. That would be a bit different system, but not a lot. I guess there would be a few other options to think about, but it feels like it would be pretty abstract. Like maybe you could do something like, each time a character reaches a fictional decision point there is some process which decides what skill must be deployed. If it hasn't been used before, a check is made, if it HAS been used before, then the tally of successes or failures is simply incremented based on whether it is a 'good stealth day' (IE you succeeded) or a 'bad stealth day' (you failed). Maybe players get some resource to allow them to declare a reroll. That would be an interesting variation... Now you have a kind of 'one-and-done' married to a success/fail tally system

Re-read the discussion of skill challenges in the Essentials rulebooks. You'll see that they adapt a variation of what you speculate about here: if in the course of the challenge a player wants to retry a particular skill (which is to say, wants to reengage the evolving situation using essentially the same strategy), then the GM is entitled to step up the difficulty of the check. And this also interacts with the rules around spending "advantages" for re-rolls etc.

I don't think the concepts are fully developed - to begin with, it would benefit from explanatory text a bit like that provided by Robin Laws in his discussion of difficulty-setting in HeroQuest revised - but it's not hopeless either.

I don't think you need a lot of WAYS, I think you need a simple and universal language within your system to EXPRESS all those ways. So, in my contemplations of redesign of the 4e-like, I have been looking at all the ways there are still different sorts of resources, and how they could all express a single 'resource model' at some level that produces a simple rule for applying them to your situation (the fiction) to achieve something, or conversely how the GM would apply his to produce setbacks or consequences.

I've been getting ready to play Agon 2nd ed, and it uses multiple player-side resource tracks - Bonds, Pathos, Divine Favour and Fate. The first three all allow building up the dice pool. The middle two also serve as "hit points" in a limited range of circumstances (by default there is no harm suffered by losing PCs in Agon). The last comes into play mostly when Pathos or Divine Favour have been exhausted but the rules tell the player to spend some. Unlike the first three Fate is never recovered, and when you run out your character's story is finished; but as you use up your Fate you also get character improvement.

You earn Bond with your fellow PCs during downtime, at a fixed rate. You can also earn it by choosing a support action rather than a more full-blooded action in a contest. But if you do that you get less Glory from the contest; and Glory is the only way to grow your Name die, which is the only die you get to include in every contest dice pool as of right. You can also earn Bond with NPCs and gods as part of the stakes of a contest.

Pathos is replenished automatically during down time between scenarios.

Divine Favour is earned by pleasing the gods, which can be ad hoc - as part of the stakes of a contest - but is also addressed systematically during downtime, when it is determined which gods the PCs pleased and angered through their choices in the scenario. As well as earning Divine Favour, this process generates Wrath - a sort of Doom Pool for the GM to use in contests - and also can generate PC improvement without having to burn up Fate.

Because I haven't played yet I haven't seen all the ways these multiple resource pools and recovery tracks interact. But the multi-dimensionality seems pretty interesting.

So I don't think it's always desirable to merge resource pools. Even in 4e, I quite enjoyed the difference between healing surges, action points and encounter powers as distinct pools to be managed in combat. (In skill challenges I'll concede there is a tendency for them to meld into one omni-pool.)

 

[pemerton]

This is one area where I definitely seeing things differently from @Manbearcat. I see Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, and Sorcerer style snowballing as categorically different from the closed scene resolution of 4e skill challenges, Cortex action scenes, Dune conflict scenes and Dogs in the Vineyard conflicts. Mainly because it (snowballing) serves to prolong and change the nature of the conflict rather than to resolve it. It produces fallout not related to the stakes of the conflict. That's a huge distinction to me.

@Manbearcat

I suspect we run very different games of Blades and Apocalypse World. I do not see either as fundamentally conflict resolution games. The rules of the game tell us what happens in the fiction, but they don't resolve conflicts or questions of stakes. They keep the momentum of the action moving forward, but they are designed to clarify rather than resolve the stakes. I don't see clocks as related to win and loss conditions at all. I see them as fundamentally representative of fictional things. So when players declare actions in my Blades games it's almost always without regard for the particular clocks in motion. I'm transparent about the clocks, but I see them as a way to communicate information about the fiction we curiously exploring together.

I guess score one for flexibility!

@Campbell, as you know your posting about this over the years has influenced me. It's helped me with my Traveller GMing, and I think has also shaped a bit how I approach Burning Wheel! (Heresy, I know.)

With that said, can I probe a little bit further with the following question: In DW, does the introduction of the notion of usefulness into the perception-type moves push it a bit more towards conflict resolution, in your view?

Also, on my reading of AW (and I think DW?) there is no say 'yes' or roll the dice. There's if you do it, you do it! That seems to me a departure from conflict or full-blooded intent-and-task resolution.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That kind of approach helps, but I'm not convinced it altogether addresses my issue (and I have some sympathy for trying to universalize the process; one of the things I think makes D&D quite as difficult to handle for some people and generally creates a fair number of problems that crop up with the system is the massively exception-based design that's always been present with spells and powers of one stripe or another, and frequently with feats and similar constructs); at the very least you can run into a situation where none of the extent special-handling options aren't adequate (which I realize you reference in your "design" wording), and at that point it seems to make as much sense to me to have common design principals and just design a set of subsystems (in a consistent pattern) for all the expected uses for a campaign. There may come up something that doesn't precisely fit one, but I think that'd be rare enough (if you understand what your campaign/game/setting is about) that the likely brute-forcing of the closest extent subsystem wouldn't be onerous.

Yeah, I know people seem to feel that there is some thematic magic in disparate subsystems too. I've always been a bit skeptical on that, as it seems to, oddly, be a position that you don't see much in discussions of any game but D&D, generally. I mean, it isn't entirely unique in having at least some diversity of subsystems, but few other modern games seem to go quite so far. Some classic systems, the D6 system has a few different ways you can express what is basically a 'power'. Of course 3e, 4e, and 5e generally are less outliers, with mostly things like magic being odd, but I still don't understand why 5e chose to have saves. It really was a misstep IMHO. PbtA particularly though is pretty uniform, and it has served that system really well. Everything is a move from a playbook, essentially. There can be 'modes of play', but the process is still basically always the same. Its amazing how few rules there are in a game like DW, it is pretty much just a couple pages, and then explanation and elaboration of material to use in the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Re-read the discussion of skill challenges in the Essentials rulebooks. You'll see that they adapt a variation of what you speculate about here: if in the course of the challenge a player wants to retry a particular skill (which is to say, wants to reengage the evolving situation using essentially the same strategy), then the GM is entitled to step up the difficulty of the check. And this also interacts with the rules around spending "advantages" for re-rolls etc.

I don't think the concepts are fully developed - to begin with, it would benefit from explanatory text a bit like that provided by Robin Laws in his discussion of difficulty-setting in HeroQuest revised - but it's not hopeless either.

Right, it is sometimes hard to be sure exactly what is meant, hinted at, and simply read in by us because we interpret the thing as almost an 'indie' game. But yeah, it could be implied. You kind of have to decide how to map the fiction onto it, which is not well constrained (or at least described) by 4e's descriptions, though RC and DMG2 certainly manage to give you a lot of ideas and options.

I've been getting ready to play Agon 2nd ed, and it uses multiple player-side resource tracks - Bonds, Pathos, Divine Favour and Fate. The first three all allow building up the dice pool. The middle two also serve as "hit points" in a limited range of circumstances (by default there is no harm suffered by losing PCs in Agon). The last comes into play mostly when Pathos or Divine Favour have been exhausted but the rules tell the player to spend some. Unlike the first three Fate is never recovered, and when you run out your character's story is finished; but as you use up your Fate you also get character improvement.

You earn Bond with your fellow PCs during downtime, at a fixed rate. You can also earn it by choosing a support action rather than a more full-blooded action in a contest. But if you do that you get less Glory from the contest; and Glory is the only way to grow your Name die, which is the only die you get to include in every contest dice pool as of right. You can also earn Bond with NPCs and gods as part of the stakes of a contest.

Pathos is replenished automatically during down time between scenarios.

Divine Favour is earned by pleasing the gods, which can be ad hoc - as part of the stakes of a contest - but is also addressed systematically during downtime, when it is determined which gods the PCs pleased and angered through their choices in the scenario. As well as earning Divine Favour, this process generates Wrath - a sort of Doom Pool for the GM to use in contests - and also can generate PC improvement without having to burn up Fate.

Because I haven't played yet I haven't seen all the ways these multiple resource pools and recovery tracks interact. But the multi-dimensionality seems pretty interesting.

So I don't think it's always desirable to merge resource pools. Even in 4e, I quite enjoyed the difference between healing surges, action points and encounter powers as distinct pools to be managed in combat. (In skill challenges I'll concede there is a tendency for them to meld into one omni-pool.)

Agon does sound a bit complicated, lol. What I found in the end was that in my running of 4e I more and more just picked out some way to let a player consume any of various resources to accomplish basically the same thing, so when I rebuilt it, I just got rid of everything except HS, and even the concepts of 'Daily' and 'Encounter' are tied to your availability of surges. It just simplified my life. I was never much for book keeping, and the older I get the less I care about it! lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Campbell, as you know your posting about this over the years has influenced me. It's helped me with my Traveller GMing, and I think has also shaped a bit how I approach Burning Wheel! (Heresy, I know.)

With that said, can I probe a little bit further with the following question: In DW, does the introduction of the notion of usefulness into the perception-type moves push it a bit more towards conflict resolution, in your view?

Also, on my reading of AW (and I think DW?) there is no say 'yes' or roll the dice. There's if you do it, you do it! That seems to me a departure from conflict or full-blooded intent-and-task resolution.

I think DW at least is in the middle. I mean, moves provide a structure around which you introduce story elements, and with which the players push things in their direction, but there IS a sense in which it adjudicates conflict. I mean, if the PCs just got a 10 on every roll, soon they would be kind of bereft of direction. There has to be some sense in which they 'fail' so that they can come back and surpass themselves. That is what heroes do, fundamentally, they "Go where angels dare not tread." And then they win, or die trying.

 

[clearstream]

Yeah, I know people seem to feel that there is some thematic magic in disparate subsystems too. I've always been a bit skeptical on that, as it seems to, oddly, be a position that you don't see much in discussions of any game but D&D, generally. I mean, it isn't entirely unique in having at least some diversity of subsystems, but few other modern games seem to go quite so far. Some classic systems, the D6 system has a few different ways you can express what is basically a 'power'. Of course 3e, 4e, and 5e generally are less outliers, with mostly things like magic being odd, but I still don't understand why 5e chose to have saves. It really was a misstep IMHO. PbtA particularly though is pretty uniform, and it has served that system really well. Everything is a move from a playbook, essentially. There can be 'modes of play', but the process is still basically always the same. Its amazing how few rules there are in a game like DW, it is pretty much just a couple pages, and then explanation and elaboration of material to use in the game.

A good example of thematic magic in disparate subsystems is sanity in CoC. Another is found in the thought-worm micro-process in ED. On in the Bushido RPG. Auto-fail on 1 in the 5th ed combat process. Scattered across TTRPGs are processes that through adroit fusing of theme and method, deliver feel.

DW is an interesting case because encapsulated in moves are micro-processes, which so far as I can tell are intentionally not limited in structure. There are process patterns (hold, forward, pick X of Y, etc), albeit these are not intended to be limiting. In a way, DW draws on the OOD pattern crystallised in MtG. Moving forward from there, I have thoughts in the direction of apis or microservices.

As a strawman, I might prefer something like

• tempo - nested clocks (here speaking of costs as much as time: quantums)
• multiple process-spaces, that properly interface
• any number of objects within each process-space, prototyped according to the rules internal to that space

In such a schema, it doesn't matter if an object inside one process-space would be unintelligible from the point of view of another process-space, but objects also can't freely migrate. Tempo rules them all, and is essential for bite. You can put tempo inside each process-space: it is powerful to also arc it over them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A good example of thematic magic in disparate subsystems is sanity in CoC. Another is found in the thought-worm micro-process in ED. On in the Bushido RPG. Auto-fail on 1 in the 5th ed combat process. Scattered across TTRPGs are processes that through adroit fusing of theme and method, deliver feel.

CoC Sanity is still run exactly like a skill check. There are additional/different rules around it in terms of the 'sanity subsystem', yes, but it still utilizes a good bit of the %-based BRP mechanical framework. OTOH, weirdly it might have been better built around the ability score part of BRP, since there are few cases where you would make a check against it. My feeling was always that BRP/CoC missed a march effectively by not using %-based ability scores too! That model worked fairly well in Boot Hill, amongst a few other early games which used it (though Boot Hill itself does NOT follow it up with a %-based skill system, which is the next logical step).

Bushido is as crazy as early D&D, and frankly a much worse design overall. It WAS a very thematically focused game, in terms of its outcomes, but I'm not in any way convinced that it was good design. We played quite a bit of it back in the 70's with a guy who was rather an "all things Japanese" freak. He did a good job of GMing it, but the rules were so abysmally complex that we all just took his word for it on all mechanical questions. Having reread it a few years ago I was rather astounded at how completely wacky the rules are... Honestly I doubt anyone who wasn't deeply enthusiastic about the source material could make it work.

I'm not sure what 5e auto fail on a 1 accomplishes exactly. It hardly seems amazingly thematic though. I mean IMHO it gives anyone a small chance of surviving some sure doom (the dragon COULD technically miss you) or of conversely forcing you to account for some slight odds of failure in all cases (you will slip and fall 1 in 20 times, so be ready if you pull enough cat burglaries). I am not really seeing where that is either A) a disparate subsystem (it is just a technical rule of adjudication of checks) nor B) particularly thematic in 5e play.

DW is an interesting case because encapsulated in moves are micro-processes, which so far as I can tell are intentionally not limited in structure. There are process patterns (hold, forward, pick X of Y, etc), albeit these are not intended to be limiting. In a way, DW draws on the OOD pattern crystallised in MtG. Moving forward from there, I have thoughts in the direction of apis or microservices.

As a strawman, I might prefer something like

• tempo - nested clocks (here speaking of costs as much as time: quantums)
• multiple process-spaces, that properly interface
• any number of objects within each process-space, prototyped according to the rules internal to that space

In such a schema, it doesn't matter if an object inside one process-space would be unintelligible from the point of view of another process-space, but objects also can't freely migrate. Tempo rules them all, and is essential for bite. You can put tempo inside each process-space: it is powerful to also arc it over them.

OK, but how do you apply an effect over the whole space? Suppose I drink a 'potion of speed'? What is the implication within all these different subsystems? They need some common inputs in order to process that, or it needs to act as a 'wrapper' on each and every one of them, accepting their outputs and altering them on accord of this additional factor. If I move, the movement subsystem has to deal with my increased tempo of movement. The combat system needs to account for it too. The healing and initiate systems, etc. (assuming they exist).

Since PbtA is very flat, it has no issue here. You can simply apply something like hold or forward, or even pick X of Y, whichever seems thematically most appropriate to a 'potion of speed'. Perhaps all it does is alter the valence of various elements of fictional positioning (IE the GM will take into account that I move twice as fast as everyone else when adjudicating what moves are made, when, and how). PbtA though is a particular type of system, which I would call 'loosely connected' in that process and principles of play are sort of the 'pudding' and the mechanics are sort of like raisins that float in it. When you invoke a move, the process is very fixed and regularized, but there's a lot that happens 'in the middle' that is subject to a less rigid, though equally principled, process.

4e would, in some respects, be a better guinea pig (one reason I chose it to base my game on, the other just being I like a lot of its flavor). A 'potion of speed' in 4e is pretty darn simple. It gives a +2 power bonus to speed. Speed can feed into movement and possibly a few other things. It could extend that power bonus to other things as well, like initiative, DEX based checks and attacks, etc. (I assume this is not done in 4e because of a concern over the potency of those bonuses vs the availability of the potion). I think this is actually showing how many factors can interact in ways that can be hard to predict. One might consider the possibility that the PbtA style of 'raisins in a cookie' might actually be the most robust, noting that it requires a very simple core design too!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Perhaps, but I don't think I'd want any more complexity for a set of rules that have to cover such a wide variety of different types of tasks.

If I had something I wanted to focus on specifically, then I would want something with a bit more nuance. As I said Savage Worlds has it's own chase rules which work a bit differently, although you could obviously use the Dramatic Task rules for Chases if you want (or for combat).

Yeah, I get why the multipurpose tool doesn't have those. That still means from my point of view all its really good for is a pacing mechanism.